False Representations

[unixronin]

cymrullewes picked up a box of Hannaford's house-brand rice-chex clone breakfast cereal yesterday, choosing it over brand-name Chex largely, I understand, because the box showed the cereal containing raspberries.  Needless to say, it doesn't.

(Actually, she's since clarified that the cereal she bought was a different one than the one she exclaimed over just before the cell connection dropped.  But anyway....)

Advertisers do this all the time.  How many times have you bought a package of food with a picture on the front that dramatically fails to match the contents, and a little tiny small-print disclaimer hidden somewhere on the box that says something like "New Wonda Choccy Sowbugs can be a part of this nutritious breakfast"?  Note that nowhere does it actually state that New Wonda Choccy Sowbugs is actually nutritious, or actually contains what the picture on the box shows.  What's worse, if it's not a food product, the odds are not insignificant that there's another piece of small print hidden somewhere that says something like "Manufacturer does not warrant any fitness or suitability for any particular purpose."

The UK has something called the Trades Descriptions Act that is supposed to restrict stuff like this.  You have to be very careful about what you claim in an advertisement in the UK, because any day, a representative from the inspectorate of Weights and Measures can walk into your office carrying a package of your product that he bought at random off a store shelf, and say, "You make this claim about this product.  Show me, with this one, right here, right now."  And you'd better be able to back up the claim.

I think the US needs one too.  It could be quite simple; all it needs to do is say something like this:

"If you, a product manufacturer, make what a reasonable person would take as a representation, via a commercial advertisement, a marketing claim, or a package illustration, that your product contains or does something that in point of actual fact it does not, and any purchaser of the product complains that the product does not in fact live up to this representation, then you are legally obligated to make up the misrepresentation to every purchaser of the product."

Discuss.

Comments

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

I'd personally like to see a law requiring absolute truth in advertising. No exaggerations, no false representation, no bullshit. Period.

As in, if the makers of X say "Everyone loves X", and one person produces a signed affidavit saying they only *like* X... then the company responsible gets fined *hard*. Not a slap on the wrist; something along the lines of "twice the profits you've made from X while advertising it in this way."

And enforced. Hard.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

That would still be hard to enforce. I can use statistics in perfectly acceptable ways to show any result I want. How would you propose to punish faulty judgment in what tests to perform or how to structure an experiment? How can you show that it was deliberate?

Slippery slope is not a valid argument, but I can see many ways that any punitive answer to either question would be misused by the state against individuals. The law is already scary enough.